It is to be understood that the term "mattress" is used hereinafter in the claims and description to incorporate cushions or similar items.
A mattress comprises a spring assembly enclosed within a fabric structure that comprises a top fabric panel, a bottom fabric panel and a border fabric panel that encloses the periphery of the spring assembly and is sewn at its peripheral edges to the top and bottom fabric panels respectively.
Conventional edge sewing apparatus (also known as a tape edging machine) comprises a support table around the periphery of which a sewing machine carriage moves on a rail or frame. The sewing machine carriage completes one pass of the periphery of the support table in stitching the top fabric panel to the border panel, the mattress is then turned over by an operator and the border panel is sewn to the bottom panel (now uppermost) in a second pass of the sewing machine.
A machine operator guides the sewing machine carriage around the periphery of the stationary mattress and support table by standing to one side of the sewing machine and walking it backwards around the support table. During sewing the operator ensures that the mattress is fed into the sewing machine correctly to ensure secure and even stitching is produced. This method of sewing is well established and it has proved difficult to encourage operators to adapt to or accept new methods of sewing.
Conventional mattress edge sewing techniques involve significant man" effort in manipulating heavy and large mattresses and it is therefore desirable to minimize the effort required by the operator to sew a mattress.
Often a mattress is larger or smaller than the size of the support table in which case additional operator effort is required in moving the mattress around the table to ensure that an edge to be sewn is presented to the sewing machine at a periphery of the table.
In a contemporary mattress sewing machine, mattresses are conveyed past a stationary sewing machine by a conveyor belt on the support table. The mattress is rotated so that all four sides of the border and top panel are presented to sewing machine in sequence before the mattress is automatically turned over and the process is repeated to secure the bottom panel to the border. This apparatus has met with resistance from operators familiar with the older technology referred to above.
A need exists to obviate or mitigate die aforesaid disadvantages and provide an improved method and apparatus for mattress production, to improve the production flow and to reduce operator fatigue by eliminating the need to lift or otherwise manipulate heavy mattresses